The Young Texas Lawyer

According to the Associated Press, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is accused of wrongfully diverting millions of dollars from the NBA franchise’s home arena to help make up for cash shortfalls incurred by the team, according to a lawsuit filed by a company controlled by the team’s former owner.

The lawsuit claims Cuban covered the Mavericks’ financial shortfalls by obtaining more than $29 million in unauthorized loans through a limited partnership designed to distribute profits from the arena, the American Airlines Center. It accuses the Mavericks and three other companies controlled by Cuban of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment.

The company that filed the suit, Hillwood Center Partners, is controlled by former Mavericks owner Ross Perot Jr. and holds a small interest in the arena’s limited partnership, Radical Arena. A related Perot company sold the Mavericks to Cuban in 2000.

Cuban’s poignant response: ”I can only offer my opinion, which is that Ross Perot Jr must be desperate from the losses he has suffered from VIctory and his hedge funds. My lawyers have been open with our minority partners, and in Mr Perot’s case, very minority, about the loans to the Mavericks. The loans have been used to put the best possible Mavericks team on the court, which in turn created the NBA’s longest sellout streak and drove business to the AAC/COC, and to Perot’s Victory development. As best I could tell, he was very happy to take advantage of the traffic when he had an economic interest in Victory to do so. Unfortunately for Mr Perot, he was apparently unable to capitalize on the benefit and is trying to find nickels in the sofa cushion.

It is my understanding that Mr Perot has received legal notice of the loans since they began, right after the Mavs appearance in the Finals as we tried to improve the team further. Only he knows why he has chosen to file a lawsuit and to make it public. The unfortunate reality is that this is the nature of our business relationship with Mr Perot. From all i can tell, he could care less if the Mavs ever win a game. I have to tell you that the biggest mistake I made in buying the Mavs was in not completely buying out his interest.”

Tonight CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 will visit the Texas town of Tenaha, the subject of a recent Eastern District of Texas lawsuit, Morrow, et al. v. Washington, et al. The plaintiff’s allege that police in this small town are pulling them over for minor infractions and end up in what results in a shakedown. Allegedly, the police confiscate any valuables they can find and then arrest the motorist for money laundering. Once they are taken to jail, the District Attorney will cut them a deal to release them and their valuable are lost as part of the process. All of which is impermissible under Texas law. The case is still pending before U.S. District Judge T. John Ward and the program airs tonight on CNN at 9 PM Central.

Today our nation, and by our nation I mean some of the legal community, celebrates “Law Day,” and what better way to celebrate than to tell you why lawyers are great. Carolyn Elefant, examines “Why Lawyers Rule the U.S. and What It Says About Our Culture” and in her findings she determines that lawyers are prominent in democracies, military leaders are prominent in developing countries, and engineers are prominent in communist nations. The article makes some interesting points and references an article from The Economist regarding the topic, which reads:

The law deals with the same sort of questions as politics: what makes a just society; the balance between liberty and security, and so on. Lawyerly skills — marshalling evidence, appealing to juries, command of procedure — transfer well to the political stage. So, sadly, does an obsession with process and a tendency to see things in partisan terms — us or them, guilty or not guilty — albeit in a spirit of loyalty to a system to which all defer. In common-law countries, the battleground of the court is of a piece with the adversarial, yet rule-bound, spirit of politics. Even in places with a Napoleonic code, lawyers abound. In Germany, a third of the Bundestag’s members are lawyers. In France, nine of Nicolas Sarkozy’s first cabinet of 16 were lawyers or law graduates, including the president, the prime minister and the finance minister, an ex-chairman of Baker & McKenzie, an American law firm.

We are, after all, “a nation of laws and not of men,” so what better profession to run such a nation than its brightest legal minds. Many will undoubtedly disagree, but they are probably just bitter military leaders and engineers.

As we pointed out in our earlier post, “Dallas County’s DNA DA,” the Dallas County District Attorney will be featured in a new Investigation Discovery channel mini series called “Dallas DNA.” The show premieres tonight at 9 pm CT and follows the work of the Conviction Integrity Unit of the DA’s office.

Regardless of your feelings on wrongful convictions, this series should provide a ton of insight into a realm of the law that most young attorneys only hear about. Below is a brief clip from tonight’s first episode.

According to the New York Law Journal, “Job Anxiety Grips Graduating Law School Students.”

With layoffs looming, it’s only natural that those awaiting to become lawyers have more to worry about. Odds are the offers will dwindle and the paychecks will get smaller. There is little that any single person can do about the economy, so just buckle up and ride it out.

Tex Parte has a great piece about volunteer attorneys in Houston that are allowed to prosecute municipal court cases once a week. It’s an interesting concept, especially in slow economic times. Both the lawyers and the taxpayer benefit, as the article points out:

It’s a win/win for everyone, except perhaps the people who decide to go to trial in municipal court in Houston. This week, five associates from Andrews Kurth in Houston started training with the city attorney’s office for a 20-week stint as volunteer prosecutors in muni court. The associates pick up rare trial experience before juries, the firm benefits from their training, and the city attorney’s office gets more lawyers to prosecute Class C misdemeanors, which include traffic tickets and city ordinance violations.

Check out the full article here.

From the Houston Chronicle…

A Houston man named Perry Mason was arrested on Tuesday, accused of practicing law without a license, officials at the Harris County District Attorney’s office said.

Spokeswoman Donna Hawkins said the 43-year-old has been charged with barratry, a third-degree felony. She said no other details were immediately available.

According to Texas Bar records, no one with that name is eligible to practice law in Texas.

TV defense attorney Perry Mason, played by actor Raymond Burr, won the majority of his cases during the original 1957-65 television series run.

Investigation Discovery will be airing Dallas DNA, a six part mini series that profiles the work of Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins and his “Conviction Integrity Unit,” on April 28th at 9PM CDT.

The newly elected Watkins established the Conviction Integrity Unit in 2007 and the unit oversees the post-conviction review of over 400 DNA cases in conjuction with the Innocence Project of Texas. The Conviction Integrity Unit is the first of its kind in the United States. Since state law began allowing post-conviction testing in 2001, Dallas County has had more exonerations than any other jurisdiction in the nation. Some legal scholars have questioned the ethics of the show, but Watkins was given final cut on all six episodes to insure that there were no ethics violations. The show has been getting some attention from both USA Today and Entertainment Weekly in the weeks leading up to its premiere and should provide for interesting television to say the least.

You’ve probably heard this time and time again, but it’s worth saying one more time… pay attention to detail!

You don’t want to end up like the Wisconsin lawyer who made the appeals court so angry that they fined him $500, asked for an investigation into his conduct and gave him tips on proofreading. Oh, and lest we forget, humiliated him in front of the whole country.

There was a piece posted here last week with tips on being a great lawyer. I have always tried to bring into my professional life the things that make one a decent person: keeping my word, not holding too many grudges, maintaining personal integrity.

But there is one tip I was given by one of my very first mentors, a prosecutor for whom I interned in my 1L year. As I have seen more than one person who clearly had not been warned about this particular quirk of the legal world, I will now pass it on to you.

When you are at a defense table, prosecutor’s table, or even conference table in a mediation, there is often a pitcher of water and glasses for your use. You know the pitcher I’m talking about – it has a duck beak-like opening spout that you have to open by pressing the level opposite it. Well, here’s the advice: when you pour yourself a glass of water, pick up the glass and pour the water into the glass over the floor, not over the table and all of your papers.

A small thing, but you’ll thank me when you see someone else end up spewing water all over the place. You’ll be cool as a cucumber with a dry table and papers intact.

Written by YTL Contributing Author Lisa Young